


The Way Out

by Galaxy_Gays



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, But anyway Klaus and Dave deserved better so I'm giving them better, Dave comforting Klaus for 20 minutes straight, Even though there is literally nothing straight about them, M/M, Romance, Vietnam, Vietnam War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-12-26 22:51:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18291827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Galaxy_Gays/pseuds/Galaxy_Gays
Summary: On a drunk evening away from the barracks, Klaus finally lets it slip to Dave that he may or may not have shown up by time travel, and seeing the dead may or may not be the reason he's constantly on the hunt for drugs and alcohol. Dave, to his credit, accepts the confession and loves Klaus anyway, and Klaus discovers that his powers may not be so daunting after all.





	1. Because I Love You

Klaus intertwined his fingers with Dave’s, kicking his feet nonchalantly as they hung out over the water. Two flasks sat with them, one resting against the soldier’s thigh and one in Klaus’s hand as they talked contently under the night sky.

“You know Dave, I’m curious,” the séance started, staring down at the shimmering water. “Your family sounds wonderful– why leave them for this?” He gestured with the flask, attempting to encompass all of the horrors they had witnessed over the past several months. Dave sighed.

“I had an older brother who enlisted,” he began, gaze fixating on the rippling pond even as Klaus brought his head up to look at him. “He was my hero growing up– not the brightest, but he was never afraid to stand up for what he believed in. It was only natural he took the path of a soldier, and I always figured I would follow in his footsteps regardless of what happened. My family took pride in the whole shebang.” He rubbed his thumb over Klaus’s knuckles. “Dumbass got reported MIA not long after his service began. The minute I was old enough to enlist I did, because some part of me was convinced I could find him and bring him home.” Dave shook his head then, tilting it up towards the glowing moon. “The other part of me knew I would never find anything.”

“Why stay then? Why not desert and head home?” Klaus asked curiously, fumbling for a response to a familial story so unlike his own. “I mean, this is pretty shit.” Dave chuckled.

“I thought about it,” he answered, swiveling his head to look at Klaus, “but then you popped up out of nowhere and, well, easiest decision I’ve ever made.”

The fourth Hargreeves kid grinned despite himself, knocking his head against Dave’s shoulder as he took a sip from his flask.

“I suppose I do have that effect on people,” he said. “I’m like a car crash: you so desperately want to look away, and yet, you can’t.” He shrugged, knocking back another drink.

“Oh c’mon, you have to give yourself more credit than that.”

“You have seen me during training, right? I’m an actual disaster. I think the car crash is a pretty good metaphor.”

“Simile,” Dave corrected, “and, in your defense, you did kinda pop up out of nowhere with no military experience. You ever gonna explain how?”

“Is grammar Nazi an insensitive joke right now? Because you’re being one. And, you would never believe my explanation, so why bother?”

Dave twisted his body to face Klaus.

“What makes you think I wouldn’t believe it?”

“Because it involves time travel,” the other man said blatantly, taking a long drink from his flask. After a moment of silence, he continued, “Blah, blah, I’ve had too much to drink–”

“Klaus, the only thing I find unbelievable about that is that you would come to this time and place. You would’ve had a dozen million options!” Dave threw his hands up in the air to emphasize his point, sipping from his flask while maintaining eye contact with his forever surprising ‘war buddy.’ “And you picked this one? No way.”

“I didn’t have any control over it!” the séance protested. “I have enough trauma, no need to add onto the pile.” Dave opened his mouth to speak but Klaus put a finger to his lips. “Your family sounds like the sweetest bunch of people I would ever meet. My dad, on the contrary, would lock me in a mausoleum away from my six, well, five other siblings—adopted, mind you—whenever he felt I wasn’t ‘reaching my full potential,’ and none of them ever even noticed I was gone. Well, _Dad_ , I’m sorry my powers aren’t of benefit to your dumb little _academy_.” Dave stared dumbfounded as Klaus took a pointed drink from his flask. The séance looked back at the soldier, face creasing. “And _you_ probably think I’m crazy now too, huh?”

“I mean, a little explaining would probably clear any thoughts I might have right up,” the other man answered honestly, hinting at Klaus to continue his narrative.

“Alright, I’ll let you indulge me. My father was less of a father and more of a...professor, perhaps? An experimenter? A torturer? Well, whatever name you slap on, he adopted me and six other children under dubious circumstances.” He waved his hands around almost nonsensically, which was a perfect match to how ridiculous he figured the whole thing sounded. “We all had powers, you see– well, except for Vanya, but more on that later. He, our ‘Dad,’ created this ‘academy’ for us, dressing us up in dumb little school outfits and trying to train us to use our powers better. See, look.” Klaus turned his wrist up, showing the umbrella tattoo decorating the pale skin there. “He called it ‘The Umbrella Academy.’ Don’t ask me why, I have no idea.” Dave furrowed his eyebrows in concern.

“Did...did your _Dad_ do that?” he asked, bewildered. Klaus nodded, letting his arm fall back to the ground.

“You betcha. Like some kinda branding or some shit, I dunno. Anyway, first in the lineup is Number One, Luther, a real douchebag if you ask me–“

“‘Number One?’” Dave parroted. Klaus chuckled bitterly.

“The crotchety old man couldn’t be bothered to name us, obviously. Mom––well, she wasn’t our real mom, she was actually a robot, but anyway––Mom gave us all names at some point so we felt some semblance of identity. Except for Five, of course, because he’s a little shit, but that’s derailing from the topic at hand! First up is Luther, who was the first and only person in the line of Dad’s favorites. His powers essentially just consist of him being extra beefy, but he has this whole leader complex so at least he has a little depth. Number Two is Diego, who, of the still living bunch, is perhaps the only person I even remotely miss. He can curve projectiles to follow any path he wants. He’s got this whole vigilante thing goin on, like Batman. Number Three is Allison, who became a super famous actress after the academy disbanded. Get this– she can say ‘I heard a rumor’ and follow it with anything and it’ll be true. I promise you I’m not making that shit up. Then there’s Number Four, which is me, and we’ll save me for last. Number Five is just Five, and he disappeared when we were kids only to reappear like a year ago––well, a year ago in my original timeline, so still the future––and insist we stop an apocalypse. Crazy, right? Anyway he can teleport and apparently time travel. Then there’s Number Six–“

“Wait, did he bring you here?” Dave asked.

“No, I came here via a weird time traveling suitcase I found while I was escaping a very traumatic kidnapping because these two other time traveling lunatics were after my time traveling asshole of a brother, Five. Try to keep up, love. Anyway, then there’s Number Six, my lovely brother Ben, who was killed when we were kids but still hangs around me sometimes. He’s my favorite. And lastly is Number Seven, Vanya, who doesn’t have any powers but plays the violin pretty well so at least she’s got that going for her.”

“And you?”

Klaus frowned. “Well, according to the late Pops I’m inferior to all of them. I can see the dead.”

“Hence the mausoleum,” the soldier connected.

“Hence the mausoleum,” the séance confirmed. He wriggled uncomfortably where he sat. “I…it’s not an easy power to live with, which sucks not only because it just sucks in general but also because you would think I would have a cooler power to accompany such shitty side effects.” He looked up at Dave. “This really doesn’t sound crazy to you? None of it?”

After months of watching the spontaneous soldier (and apparent medium) look past people instead of at them, wince when no one was talking, and just suddenly decide to bury his head between his knees or into Dave’s chest, no, Dave didn’t think anything sounded too crazy. Klaus has been odd from the start, and somehow all of his slightly slurred explanation made more sense than it didn’t. (It also certainly helped that Dave was in love with the apparent lunatic, and ghosts or no ghosts he trusted him implicitly.)

“No. What side effects? If you wanna talk about them, anyway,” Dave urged. Klaus blinked in surprise at the curt response but continued nevertheless.

“Well for one I can’t turn them off. Not without a little help anyway,” he added, raising the flask. “That’s probably a byproduct of poor power control but it’s so terrifying that I don’t even try to fuck around with it. And, I can’t really do anything other than talk to the dead, so what’s the point anyway? I hate it, Dave. Gory faces and mangled bodies all screaming at you to save them or repent them or fucking _whatever_ when you can’t do anything but listen!” He shook his head. “Especially here. There’s death everywhere here. It follows me, it follows you, it follows everyone in this damn camp.”

Dave wrapped his arm around Klaus and pulled him closer.

“Do you see them now?” he asked quietly.

“No, but I’m drunk now. That’s how this works.” Klaus laughed, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “Once I found out what a little bit of alcohol or a little bit of ecstasy could do, I was hooked. No more scary faces to terrify little kid Klaus.” He took another shot from the flask. “Daddy didn’t really like that too much. Cue mausoleum.”

“Jesus, you weren’t kidding about the trauma, huh?” Dave paused. “You know how you said you can’t really do anything for them? That you just listen and that’s it? Maybe that’s your way out.”

Klaus’s face scrunched up. “A way out? Trust me pal, I’ve tried. Dad revived me every time.”

“No! Not like that! I mean, like, hm. Promise you won’t tell anyone?”

“I literally just spilled my entire life story to you, pretty much– I won’t tell a soul, living or dead.”

“Very funny. Anyway, I get these...I don’t know what you’d call them– freakouts, I guess? My nerves get all fried and I–“

“A panic attack,” Klaus interrupted without hesitation. “LSD gives me those. Also my feelings of inadequacy.”

“I...okay, a panic attack then. My way out is to focus on the shit around me instead of what’s in my head– what I can see, what I can hear, that kinda thing. After that, I don’t feel so panicked anymore. You need to figure a way out like that when you’re encountering the dead– maybe it’s accepting that you can’t help them.”

“Why are you being so rational about this? And besides, don’t you think I’ve tried that? Finding a non-addictive way out, I mean, not your little ‘shit around me’ method because the answer to everything would be ‘decaying ghost corpse.’”

“I’m being rational about this because I love you, and I trust you, and yes of course you’ve tried but now you’ve got me and I don’t plan on locking you in a mausoleum when you fail. So.”

 _Because I love you_.

Everything after that had melted into the sounds of the night, small next to those four words.

 _Because I love you_.

“Do you really?” Klaus finally asked, voice scarcely above a whisper as he looked back at Dave with wide eyes. No one had ever said that to him and _meant_ it, not in the way it sounded like Dave did, smirking at him in the moonlight.

“Yes, and I’m determined to help you figure this out so that when you take your little time traveling briefcase back to the future–“

“I’m not leaving here,” Klaus interrupted again, cracking a smile of his own. “I love you too much for that.” He leaned in, closing the gap between his mouth and Dave’s as his hand slid up into the other man’s hair.

“We would be crucified if they caught us doing this,” Dave murmured against Klaus’s lips.

“And yet you make no move to stop me,” the séance murmured back, closing their mouths again as he tackled Dave into the cool night grass.

* * *

  _“Please! I have a family!”_

_“I was drafted! I never wanted to fight!”_

_“It_ burns _.”_

_“Help me! Please! I’m begging you!”_

_“Why are you ignoring me!”_

_“ANSWER ME!_ ”

Klaus snapped, fork skidding across the plate as he stared at the pile of mush in front of him. A few other soldiers glared at him before going back to their own meals, having become mostly accustomed to the man’s occasional odd outbursts. Dave bumped him gently with his shoulder, causing him to jump.

“You okay?” the soldier asked lowly, voice slipping beneath the general chatter of the meal hall (if it could even be called that). “How many are there?”

“You really want me to look up and count?” the other man hissed, picking up his fork again in a death grip. “I just want them to _shut up_. I need a drink.” He paused again. “Do you really believe all this? Without question?”

Dave frowned, taking a bite of his food.

“Why do you keep asking me that? Of course I believe you,” he whispered back. “The better question is why _you_ don’t believe _me_.”

Klaus chewed his lip. There was a lot of answers to that question, some snarky and some honest (Dave’s power had turned out to be keeping Klaus honest, after all), but the deafening chorus of ghoulish screams distracted him from saying anything. His face twitched as he tried to cover it up, chewing obnoxiously loud to compete with the dozens of other voices crowding his mind.

“Try focusing on my voice, not theirs,” Dave murmured, and Klaus smiled a little at the compassionate lilt in his voice.

“There’s only one of you, Dave,” the séance said sadly around a mouthful of mush. “There’s lots and lots of them, layering over each other until I can barely hear myself so much as _think_.”

“Speaking of thinking, have you given any thought to what I said last night?”

“Thought is hard between a hangover and the deafening roar of the dead, but I have considered it, yes.” Klaus shoveled another mouthful between his lips. “It’s valid advice, Davey, but I just don’t know _how_. How’d you figure out– yours?” Klaus scrubbed his face with his free hand. “I’m horrible,” he muttered.

“My brother came up with it,” Dave answered. “And, you aren’t horrible.”

“Yeah, I am,” he argued. “Car crash.”

The seasoned soldier flicked Klaus’s shoulder.

“Look at me,” he said. The fourth Hargreeves child and newbie time traveler obeyed, cocking his head at Dave as he swallowed a mouthful of army food. “You aren’t a car crash, Klaus. You are the only one calling yourself that, and as someone who cares about you I’m telling you to knock it off.”

Klaus batted his eyelashes and pulled his face into an amused expression. “You care about me? How sweet.”

“Ass,” Dave muttered, turning back to his meal. Klaus smirked a little when he saw the smallest smile pulling at the other soldier’s lips, and satisfied with that response he shifted his focus back to his own food.

“How many are there now?” Dave asked curiously after a few moments. “You don’t seem nearly as tense as you were.”

Klaus opened his mouth to make another snide comment about not counting but found that he could, in fact, count this time.

“Three,” he answered, still surprised. “And they’re all on the far end of the table.”

“So your way out is...army food.”

The séance threw his head back in laughter.

“I guess so, Davey, I guess so.”

* * *

 All Klaus could hear was screaming.

He was fumbling to shoot his gun but he didn’t know where to aim. Everywhere he looked people were crowded, yelling and crying out and ordering him to do _something_ but his hand just shook because he couldn’t trust anything he saw. Which screaming man was an enemy? Which was a friend? Which was the restless soul of a dead soldier longing for vengeance? Klaus didn’t know. He shot into the air at what he thought was a real soldier and he was berated, people scolding him for his shit aim and demanding he did better, gesturing towards the mass of bodies as if it was obvious which ones he needed to kill. His ears started to ring, panic setting in as his comrades surged forward into battle without him, taking out enemies left and right but only making the number of people he alone saw and heard multiply. Gaze flicking from left to right and back again he tried to find Dave, because _fuck_ it was illegal as shit but he needed him to grab his hands and tell him he was fine, but amidst the swarm he couldn’t find the soldier’s figure. Trying to keep up with the army he tripped and toppled to the ground, laying in the mud as all of the noise became too deafening to bear and he tried to get everything to just _stop_.

Vaguely, he heard someone yelling his name, but he couldn’t answer. He couldn’t even breathe. He tried to suck in air but his lungs received nothing, and he pushed himself to his knees as he desperately tried to suck in oxygen, some _something_ to stop the tears streaming down his face as he started to choke.

Klaus nearly lept out of his own skin when someone suddenly grabbed his shoulder, hand strong and firm and oddly comforting. “ _Klaus!_ ” the man yelled, using his other hand to grab the séance’s mud-stained face and turn it towards his own.

“Dave,” Klaus managed, grabbing the man’s arms in a deathgrip.

“Are you hurt? Were you shot? What–” Dave began to frantically ask but the other man cut him off.

“ _I don’t know what’s real_ ,” he choked out, looking up at the seasoned soldier with tears running rivers through the dirt on his cheeks. “There’s so many and I can’t– I can’t–”

Dave hauled Klaus to his feet.

“Breath, Klaus, just _breathe_.”

“I c– I _can’t_ ,” he whimpered. God, how weak did he have to be to lay sobbing in the mud waiting for someone to haul him to his feet while all of his compatriots surged bravely on? Reginald was right, God he was _so right_ –

“Dammit, your dad was wrong, Klaus!” Dave yelled over the gunfire. _Did I really say all of that out loud?_ “Yes, you did, and you’re so wrong about all of it! You are the bravest fucking man I’ve ever met! You wake up and deal with horrible figures _all day_ _every day_ and you take it like a fucking champ! When you will you realize that you are _fucking worth something!_ ” He shook Klaus’s shoulders to emphasize his point, tears stinging the corners of his own eyes as he gazed back at the séance in front of him.

Klaus was struck silent, breaths evening despite the tears that continued to wash away the dirt on his cheeks. Everything was quieter and more calm as he locked eyes with Dave, hands slowly releasing the other man’s arms.

“Five,” he said quietly, picking out the vengeful screams of the dead amid the general chaos of war.

“Can you handle five?” Dave asked, the seriousness in his tone forming another lump in Klaus’s throat.

“Yeah,” he answered shakily.

“Then let’s go kick some ass, okay?”

“Okay.”

* * *

 “Klaus! Most of everyone has already headed out, are you ready yet?” Dave called, fussing with his hair in the dirty mirror he had managed to get his hands on. He thought he looked rather spiffy, dressed in a slightly oversized shirt tucked into a pair of slightly oversized pants, and the prospect of being able to spend a night away from the barracks with Klaus set a smile on his face. He looked over his shoulder, grin fading when he saw the man in question still curled up on his bed, knees pulled up to his chest as he slowly rocked back and forth. “Klaus?” he asked more gently. He turned to take a step towards the séance but was met with a yelp, halting him in his tracks.

“Don’t,” Klaus groaned, pushing his hands over his ears. “They’re loud enough as it is.”

“How...there’s no one in here, just me and you,” Dave said bemusedly, stepping back nevertheless. “Do...do I really have that many?”

Klaus mumbled something into the cloth of his military pants.

“What?”

“I said _there’s dozens_ ,” the crumpled man repeated forcefully, as if he detested having to repeat himself.

And it was true. He hated hearing the words out loud, hated telling Dave to back off, hated not being able to dress up and enjoy liberty because he couldn’t separate himself from the haunted soldiers that followed him and the only person he had ever truly cared for around without relenting. His chest seized at the sound of Dave stepping back, and he shook his head against his knees.

“I’m sorry,” he said hoarsely. “It’s not your fault, it’s mine. It always is.”

Dave took a seat where he stood, mind no longer on going out to some bar to spend the night getting drunk and making out with Klaus in some random alley where no one would find them.

“It’s not your fault, love,” he replied gently. “I understand.”

“Don’t say that. You never know who’s listening,” Klaus chided sharply, too sharply for him. “You should go. Bring me back some liquor.”

“It’s no fun if you’re not there,” Dave argued. “Though I understand if you do want me to leave.”

“I want you t–” What _did_ he want? He thought he wanted to get away from the dead at all costs– it was what he had wanted since he was a kid, it was the reason he destroyed himself over and over until he fucking _died repeatedly_ from drug overdoses, and it was the reason he couldn’t close his eyes without taking sedatives heavy enough to kill him if he wasn’t careful (which he never was).

And yet, more than anything, he didn’t want Dave to leave.

“Stay. Please.”

“What can I do?”

“Just...talk. Cover them up. Talk. Please.”

“Alright, what’s the future like?”

Klaus offered up a strained laugh.

“It’s better than here, I can tell you that. We’ve got the Internet, for one thing.”

“The hell is that?”

“It’s like– a network of all these...it connects everyone in the world,” Klaus tried, removing his hands from around his knees to try and gesticulate what he meant.

“I can’t see your hands, Klaus.”

“Oh, duh. Well, it’s this massive network, a web, if you will, and anyone anywhere with a computer or a smartphone can access it–”

“A smartphone?” Dave piped up.

“It’s like a phone but...smarter.”

“Wow, I can picture it so perfectly with that description, thank you so much.”  

“Well it’s accurate! You can do all these other things on them other than calling, like, like–”

“Like accessing the Interweb,” Dave supplied. Klaus giggled.

“The Internet, but yes. That’s one of many things people use them for.” He unfolded himself, falling back supinely on the cot. “You can find pretty much anything on the Internet, like dumb cat videos and fuckin...whatever you want. I found my drug dealer through a place on the Internet called Craigslist.” Dave scoffed, causing Klaus to snicker. “I don’t miss it as much as I would’ve thought, though. I don’t really miss my phone either, or anything, really.” He paused contemplatively. “I suppose the future isn’t so great compared to here after all.”

“How do you figure? You said it yourself: this is pretty shit. The Internet sounds much more interesting than shootin’ the shit in an army barrack because there’s nothing else to do but wait.”

“Maybe that’s why I don’t miss it,” Klaus answered vaguely. He dangled his fingers off the side of the bed and Dave took them in his own.

“I don’t follow.”

Klaus rolled over to look at him, pulling his hand back to prop up his head. “I can’t shoot the shit with you if I’m in the future.”

Dave moved closer to the bed, looking up at Klaus with a dumb grin on his face. “Am I really that entertaining?”

“That’s not the right word, but yes,” the séance hummed softly, leaning his head over the side of the cot and pressing his lips to Dave’s, grabbing the other man’s head with his free hand and tilting it up for a better angle. They did that for a few moments, which was definitely a few moments too long considering where they were, and Dave suddenly (though reluctantly) pushed himself off of Klaus.

“ _Jesus_ ,” he muttered, standing up and brushing himself off. “And you got mad at me for calling you ‘love.’”

Klaus sat up and swung his legs out over the side of the bed. “There is no one else in this barrack, Davey. Not now, anyway.”

“Still too dangerous.”

“How does a random bar sound, then?” Klaus asked, standing up with a cheeky grin on his face. “You’ll have to give me a moment to change into something that isn’t this, of course.”

“Depends: how many are there now?”

“Zero.”

Klaus risked a quick kiss to Dave’s cheek, and for once the only voice he heard was that of the other soldier making an indignant squeak.

* * *

As Klaus laid in his bed, eyes squeezed shut and hands shoved over his ears as he tried to block out all of the ghouls vying for his attention, throwing themselves at him and begging for help because he was out of drugs and out of alcohol and there was no way in _hell_ he was going to leave his room to get more because that meant looking at his family and looking at _Five_ who would merely stare back, gaze cold and unapologetic, because he didn’t care what he had to do to stop the apocalypse even if it meant killing the one person Klaus had ever loved more than himself, the séance came to a realization.

His way out had never been army food, or lying in the mud, or random Vietnamese bars.

It had been Dave.

And now that he was gone, Klaus was stuck with a family that didn't care and a world that had no place for him, leaving the séance to mourn not only the love of his life but also the only person he could have ever called home– he was, for the first time in so long, truly, deeply alone.


	2. Wherein Five Realizes He's An Asshole

Klaus sat on the floor, his back to the door, shaking violently as he rocked back and forth. He could hear the gunfire, the cries of men, the scolds of Reginald, the dismissals of his siblings, and he screamed in response to all of it until his voice was raw and his vocal cords hurt and he was so hoarse he could barely speak. How much had he taken? Had he even taken anything? He didn’t remember. He didn’t care. He tried to stagger to his feet but his legs failed him and he fell, slicing his arm on his desk.

“FUCK!” he screamed. “Fuck, fuck, _fuck_.” He grabbed his arm and didn’t try to get up again, head resting against the table legs as traitorous tears began to stream down his face. There was screaming, he realized, though whether it was him screaming or the screams of the dead he couldn’t tell through his blurred vision and foggy hearing. He closed his eyes while he tried to block out everything, like how sick he felt, or how much he wished he had the strength to stand and hobble to the window so he could “fall out” in his stupor. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt so alone, so afraid, so completely betrayed and emotionally _raw_.

A knock on the door sounded like a gunshot amidst the chorus of cries and he yelped, burying his head between his knees.

“Fuck off, Five,” he demanded hoarsely. Who else could it be? Diego always announced himself, bringing food Klaus promised he would eat but never did. Vanya’s knock was far softer, and she too would call out her name before gently trying the locked handle. Allison obviously couldn’t, but she didn’t visit much, and the one or two times she had she had used a distinct knocking pattern before slipping a note under the door that said ‘From Allison’ anyway. He could always tell when Luther was coming by the way he stomped loudly to the door, never knocking but lingering as if he had something he wanted to say and no way to say it. The door would always groan under the man’s weight as he leaned against it, as if trying to summon some kind of courage before entering the room (which he was never able to do). That left Five, who had only come once before in an attempt to explain himself. His knock, forceful and pointed, was indicative enough of who it was, and he thus never called out his ‘name’ before entering.

Klaus never even let him through the door, let alone say a single word.

The door creaked as it opened and Klaus started to shake his head, even more confident that the murderer he had called his brother was trying to make another attempt at an explanation.

“I said fuck off, Five! Fucking go!”

“I’m upset you would put me on the same level as your ‘time traveling asshole of a brother,’” a distinctly familiar voice said.

Klaus slowly brought his head up, scrubbing his eyes. He refused to turn and look, heart pounding as he tried to explain the auditory information he was receiving. Surely, this was just another hallucination, one so horrible and cruel but also profoundly _real_ that he found himself caught between trying to shut it out and daring to indulge it.

“You, you aren’t real,” he managed, his voice shaking as he continued to stare at his bed.

“You’re a fucking mess, Klaus. Five told me you hadn’t come out in days but I didn’t realize–”

“Stop!” he begged, jumping to his feet and nearly falling over from turning around so fast. “Please!”

God, he looked so real _(but ghosts always do, don’t they?)_.

Dave looked like he had just left a battle, hair mussy and uniform dirty. He still had a fresh cut on his cheek, tattered boots clicking as he stepped forward and reached out a familiar weathered hand to steady Klaus as he threatened to teeter forward.

“You’ve had a lot,” he said gently. Klaus recoiled, terrified of the possibility that they might touch because then he would know it was all just an evil byproduct of his mind and there wouldn’t be any room for a sliver of hope that maybe, _just maybe_ , Dave really was there, looking at him like he was his whole world just like he always had.

_Had._

_Had!_

“You aren’t real, just like everyone else in this room, I know that, you aren’t–” He started to hyperventilate, hands coming up to rub his face as he staggered backward.  

“ _Klaus_.”

Surely a hallucination couldn’t sound _that_ real?

Dave gently took the other man’s shaking hands and pulled them away from his face. Klaus gaped as the callous fingers smoothly guided his wet hands to press against the soldier’s chest, expression soft and reassuring.

“No bullet hole, see?” Dave murmured. “And a heartbeat to match.”

“I’m tripping _real_ hard,” Klaus sputtered, but he buried his face into Dave’s chest anyway because even if he was just a _very_ convincing hallucination he had him for now and for now that was what he needed. The soldier’s hands slid up to cradle the other man’s head, burying his face into Klaus’s neck as they both relished in the feeling of holding each other again.

“Car crash,” Klaus mumbled.

“Right now? I agree. When’s the last time you slept, or ate, or did...anything other than drugs?”

“I don’t think...I’m high right now,” the séance protested weakly. His eyes widened. “I don’t think I’m high right now,” he repeated. “I ran out. I’m not high. The dead should’ve been indicative of that–oh my God, you’re actually _here_!” He untangled himself from Dave and looked at him, eyes wide as a different kind of tears threatened to spill over. “But– how? You can’t be– and–“

“If I’m being honest? Not quite sure. Your brother, Five, right?” Klaus nodded. “He had something to do with it. Something about a commission and cloning? No idea.”

The séance’s heart stopped.

“So you...you’re just a clone.”

“No! I’m not, I swear!” Dave rushed to correct. “If I understood his very technical explanation correctly, you did, uh, mourn over a clone, though. To preserve the timeline, and whatever.”

“This is like fucking Star Wars,” Klaus snorted, shaking his head as he wrapped his arms around Dave again. “So I don’t have _your_ dog tags, I have some clone’s dog tags?”

“No, Five gave the clone my dog tags, I remember that part.” The soldier gave a dopey grin. “He said you wore them all the time?”

“I’m wearing them now, idiot,” the séance murmured. “I never take them off.”

“And, what’s Star Wars?”

“Dumb movie series. Whatever. We can watch it if you want. We have all the time in the world now.” Klaus buried his head into Dave’s chest to muffle a sob. Emotions were a _bitch_.

“Hey, are you okay?” the soldier asked gently, trying to separate himself from Klaus so he could look at the séance’s face.

“No! Absolutely not!” he laughed. “But, I’m a hell of a lot better with you here.” He planted his mouth firmly on Dave’s, and without hesitation the soldier kissed him back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finally wrote something! Woohoo! Everything else on our account thus far has been Lance's but I've finally thrown myself into the ring haha.  
> (Thanks to Lance for editing <3)


End file.
